


sore eyes

by isonlyme



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Affairs, Angry Theo, Arguments, Early Mornings, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mild Language, New York City, Pining, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, bedroom argument, grown men arguing like children, it's not a fight without boris smoking, no beta reader we die like men folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:07:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29403138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isonlyme/pseuds/isonlyme
Summary: “I don’t expect you to understand but it’s rough..to be in love with the wrong person.”
Relationships: Kitsey Barbour/Theodore Decker, Kitsey Barbour/Tom Cable, Theodore Decker/Boris Pavlikovsky, boreo - Relationship
Comments: 3
Kudos: 24





	sore eyes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [litttle_starr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/litttle_starr/gifts).



> “Drifting in forever haze,  
> What to do with every day  
> What to do with working limbs  
> So he told me, ‘sink or swim.’”
> 
> -Limbs ~ Widowspeak

A text message from Theo’s phone echoed, then resonated in the dark; the ceiling was haloed in the screen’s soft blue light moments before returning to black. Different sheets that held familiar smells. Theo reached out from under the blankets with a sleepy hand for his glasses and stopped cold. 

_Kitsey_ : _Hey you! Still spending the night at Hobie’s? Wanna grab a bite to eat in the morning? I can swing by the shop :) xoxoxo_ _♡_ _♡_ _♡_ _!!!_

A rustle next to him. Theo set the phone back onto the hotel nightstand with a hollow clatter before Boris could turn over and inspect. The barely there tickle of his hair against Theo’s bare neck, a subdued breath from behind warming the still air. Boris extended a hand to pull Theo’s upturned shoulder back down into the sheets, murmuring nonsensical Polish—words that would have soothed Theo, in years prior, but now only made him lie unmoving around his touch. The refusal to accept; the wave of shifting light casting foreign shadows along the walls, an inky blue prelude to dawn. The city awakening, another night unfurling into the real world: leaving Theo unsure how to place his relationship with Boris among the daily trivialities of his own life. A piece that does not fit anywhere, no matter what age or chapter they decide to burst into. It simply would not work. 

Theo knew Boris was not asleep—his undressed body was emanating delicious heat, closeness that made Theo flinch as he neared. With his back to the curtain he was bathed in shadow, accentuating his downturned jaw and angular form—all the more resemblant to Theo of a sculpted Hermes, or that of a Baroque painting: shaped hues of milk white and hushed blue contours that dipped into the crevices of his body, the brief suggestion of color, only a brushstroke of width, blooming under his sharp cheeks. 

His hand the only thing touching him. It crept lower, a delicate dance of fingers across skin, towards his exposed abdomen until Theo flung out a hand in warning. Ironclad grip. 

_“Boris.”_

But he only chortled out a tired laugh, his dark eyes open and one expressive brow furrowed. 

“What? Are you still upset over your bird that you cannot enjoy? Let me touch you,” Boris ignored his request—along with the hand locked onto his wrist—and continued to tease with soft touches that drove him mad. Theo brushed Boris’s hand away and sat up. 

“Stop. I can’t do this anymore.” Theo said and pulled the thin bedsheet over his middle. 

“Cannot do what? Have fun? If this is about _Птица_ , you know there are ways to get it back.”

  
Theo could not address the crippling shame he felt about the painting. The years of its guarded presence holding Theo afloat. Gone. “I can’t..I can’t keep hiding. It’s wrong. And technically, this is an affair.”

“Hah! _Affair_ ,” He spit out the word like it was poison to his lips, “As if snowflake would care. She sleeps with her love, why can you not with yours? Hmm?” 

Theo did not reply. “We are adults, Potter. Grown men. She can do what she likes the same as we.” Boris went to the nightstand on his side—Theo’s heart sped at the curve of his taut skin, how his bare hands had felt every scar, caressed each shoulder blade, trailed a finger in unadulterated bliss down the dip in his lower back—his toned muscles twisting as he reached for a cigarette. The days spent craving his body against his own, how desperately Theo missed it during the daytime: a fact he couldn’t face in the present moment, not with him so close, his lips soft even in a sneer. 

“You make this sound like it’s an acceptable thing.” 

“What has it been these past ten years then? Vegas? Was _that_ something you forgot?” Boris spoke around the cigarette, his voice icy and holding every drop of contempt for the lost time they spent emerging into adults—the things left unspoken finally dusted off and frowned upon. 

“Like how you forgot to reach out to me all this time.” Theo said bitterly

“Pfft. Is different thing. Don’t change the subject.” 

  
“I’m not. It is directly connected and you know it.” Theo crossed his arms. 

“ _Is directly connected,”_ Boris rolled his eyes and mimicked him. 

“So what then?” Theo asked over Boris’s imitation, his voice growing louder, “Why come all the way out here? Why stay? You could have left the second you saw me in that pub. An easy way out, really. With the painting lost forever and all.” Theo felt the anger rise from where it had been sitting vacant all these years; he had no issue with the bite behind his words, or what it might do to their secret nights spent together. Kitsey might be happier with Cable but it didn’t matter to Theo: he couldn’t live with the shame it would cause if the Barbours found out about Boris, or Hobie. Having to come clean. 

Boris leaned up against the headboard—completely bare and unashamed in the fact—to point a finger at Theo. “I stayed for you. Hah! I even took painting for you. If not, would have no reason to be back. Would never see you again.” 

Theo let out a mirthless laugh. To conceal the knot of worry threading its way into his mind. “That’s your excuse? To ‘see me?’ We were childish and stupid in Vegas. Apparently nothing’s changed.”

“Fuck you.” Boris stamped out the cigarette and rose from the bed, facing the curtained window and allowing Theo to gaze with confliction at his back. His dense set of black curls magnified in the filtered sunrise. “Thinking I can come back, we can be together, like this. With no worry. Такой идиот.” He muttered to himself.

But he heard him. Theo crawled across the bed and took Boris’s forearm to spin him back. “What did you expect Boris? You can show up in my life, let us have a few good fucks and think everything’s alright? The same?” He had a pained expression flash across his face, his eyes once bright but were now shaded with emptiness at the brief moments he had hope. 

“Of course not,” Boris said quickly, but Theo knew that fallen face, even now he did a poor job at hiding what he was feeling, “I came here on business trip. And found you! Was fate that brought us together. Don’t you see it, Theo? And now is fate asking us to be here.” 

“Fuck fate, Boris. You can’t just expect me to drop everything and go. Hell, even be sleeping with you. I’m engaged to be married, you have a wife—or was that a lie too? I practically own the shop, I can’t just up and leave Hobie like that. I have a _life_ here.” Theo ignored the ache in his stomach remembering the sight of Boris, after ten years, finally seeing him. The joy that overcame him, the memory of how it made the fierce wind that afternoon not as harsh; his tired eyes had lightened when his arms found his shoulders, small mannerisms never forgotten. 

“You expected me to drop everything, that day. In Vegas I had a life, and still you wanted me to go with you. What is so different now?” Boris wiped his face with a rough hand and glared at Theo. His black eyes glittered with hidden emotion: regret for what could have happened, their future dangling by a what-if.

“I told you. I just can’t. I can’t have sex with you anymore. Not like this. It’s wrong on so many levels—I have a fiancé, whether or not I love her. I still have ties. And I am in no way flying across the continent on some drug heist for you. It’s not my fault that you lost the fucking painting.” 

Boris sighed. His face undeniably hurt. “So harsh, Potter. I do not know what time has done to change you, but maybe you do not mean things you say.” His smile was only a quirk of his lips, not reaching his eyes. Empty. 

  
“And now, as I think. If not for your little bird, maybe we would have never met again. Last goodbye under that street lamp.” Boris continued, his face hollow. Theo didn’t like where this was going—the broken look in Boris’s eyes as he bent to pick up his clothes strewn across the carpet. 

“Where are you going?” Theo asked with bated breath as he watched Boris button his pants, his overcoat, shirt. 

Boris, who could never keep his mouth shut. Left without a word. 

If only Boris could see, Theo thought, he was doing this for their own good. Because really, what else was there to do? Theo wasn’t chained to Boris, and neither was he. They were adults. They had lives to live—regardless of their love, the ardent connection that stemmed from boyhood, no matter how many times they tried to make it work.

This wasn’t a relationship. Theo had to tell himself compulsively as he gathered his own clothes off the floor and left Boris’s hotel room. To meet Kitsey, to pretend he was at the shop. That everything was going as planned. But Theo started to wonder: was there any way to make things the way they _should_? Could there be one?

So that Theo could wake to Boris’s sleeping shape in the morning, the face he loved, rather than Kitsey’s? Go their separate ways, different relationships, yet remain on parallel paths: could Theo ever imagine introducing Mrs. Barbour to Boris, while Kitsey stayed with Tom? Would she smile in the same tender, personal way that she often did when Theo was in the room? 

Theo knew he had it all wrong. He was afraid of losing Boris; the shame that resided deep in his bones was only at himself—surfacing words: coward. Trapped. Isolated. Stuck in an engagement meant only for the bettering of others. Not what _he_ wanted.

_Stay. We can make it work._

A dull, festering throb started at the base of his chest, worming its way to his heart. Clung to the back of his throat. Skull pounding a new kind of headache down the busy streets, searching with sore eyes for a familiar overcoat, thick black hair blowing in the wind. His life raft out of the choppy future he was forced to drown in. 

_Last goodbye under that streetlamp._  


_Theo: Boris. Call me._

**Author's Note:**

> words//:
> 
> Птица- the bird  
> Такой идиот - such an idiot


End file.
